Known packaging or palletizing facilities for stacking and palletizing objects, such as packages or bundles made of a plurality of articles, for example beverage containers, usually have horizontal conveying devices with conveyor belts on which the piece goods or bundles are conveyed in uninterrupted or in irregular succession to a handling device. There, the individual piece goods or bundles are shifted, aligned, and/or rotated in order to bring them into a suitable spatial arrangement, which forms a basis for pushing together the piece goods or bundles to form stackable layers of piece goods or bundles in grouping stations arranged downstream.
Different methods for rotating the bundles are used in current filling and packaging lines, which can have suitable movable stops or two conveyor belts moving at different speeds, for example. The known handling devices can also be provided with grippers, which are suspended at a gantry system, for example, and which can be shifted, rotated, and additionally moved in a vertical direction within a defined range of movement in order to be able to lift up individual piece goods or bundles for the purpose of rotating and/or shifting them. The grippers can also be arranged on the arms of multi-axis robots, for example, which are placed alongside the horizontal conveying devices.
For the purpose of relocating and/or aligning piece goods or bundles when handling them in practice in such a way, they are seized, lifted up, and transferred to a desired position or in a desired alignment within a grouping. Numerous gripping apparatuses are already known from prior art for this purpose, such as from EP 2 388 216 A1. This known gripping apparatus has two gripping arms, which are horizontally spaced apart from each other and arranged via mechanical connections at an intermediately arranged carrier. The gripping arms can be moved toward each other in order to seize objects. Under a defined application of force, the gripping arms are furthermore detachable from the carrier in a vertical direction and away from the carrier. At the free end, both gripping arms have clamping jaws, which are in surface contact with the objects when seizing those particular objects.
A further gripping apparatus is shown in DE 102 04 513 A1, for example. Here, a plurality of gripping arms located opposite each other is guided within a middle part. One gripping arm is shiftable in relation to another gripping arm by means of a positioning member such that both gripping arms can be closed. Provided at the lower ends of the gripping arms, at the sides facing toward each other, are gripping sections for gripping building material packages.
In addition, there are further handling devices for gripping, shifting, rotating, and/or relocating articles or bundles, which handling devices are based on so-called delta robots or parallel kinematic robots, which, in a three-arm design, are also referred to as tripods. Each of the arms of such a tripod or delta robot consists of an upper arm swivelably arranged at the base so as to be driven about a frame-fixed swivel axis and of a lower arm that is articulatedly connected to the upper arm and to the coupling element. In this case, the lower arm is designed to be passive and without a drive for being swiveled in relation to the upper arm or to the coupling element. One or more of the lower arms can be connected to the particularly associated upper arms and to the coupling element by way of ball joints, for example. Such an individual lower arm is freely swivelable and has no inherent stability. All upper arms of a delta robot are each mounted to be driven swivelably about swivel axes that are located preferably within a common plane. Three lower arms connected to the coupling element and to their particularly associated upper arm in any position form a triangle of forces, which can only be moved when the three upper arms synchronously perform the swiveling movements calculated for them about their frame-fixed swivel axes. Two or more swivel axes can run parallel to each other; as a rule, all swivel axes have two intersection points with other swivel axes.
For the purpose of guiding the coupling element in at least one specified alignment relative to the base, at least one of the lower arms can consist of two linkage elements, also termed ulna and radius, which form a parallelogram linkage. In this context, the coupling element serves as a working platform, which is also referred to in practice as a tool center point (TCP). A manipulator can be arranged at this TCP in the form of gripping arms or the like handling devices, for example, which are advanceable toward each other, such that the manipulator can seize articles, bundles, or the like piece goods and rotate, shift, or lift them from a support surface.
The manipulator arranged on the working platform or the TCP can optionally be mounted to be rotatable in order to align the manipulator or in order to be able to perform a desired rotation of the articles or piece goods. Instead of a drivable rotatable mounting of the manipulator on the coupling element, it is generally also conceivable to arrange the manipulator non-rotatably at the coupling element and to twist the entire coupling element relative to the base with a corresponding compensation movement of the arms by means of the telescopic shaft. This is, however, associated with the disadvantage of having a limited angle of rotation for the coupling element. This limitation results from reaching the end stops of the articulated connections of the upper arms and/or of the coupling element with the lower arms and/or with the mutual contact of adjacent lower arms.
Such handling devices with tripods are known from DE 10 2010 006 155 A1, from DE 10 2013 208 082 A1, and from U.S. Pat. No. 8,210,068 B1. These devices are highly precise and can moreover be moved quickly for handling the particular articles in question. Tripods as known from the prior art have movable manipulators in order to be able to receive the particular articles and release them after handling or positioning. The manipulators can be controlled pneumatically, hydraulically, or electrically, for example, and for this purpose, line connections are coupled to the corresponding manipulator. These line connections can be a hindrance with regard to the freedom of movement of the tripod. In addition, the line connections must be installed securely to exclude the risk of damaging line connections during operation of the tripod. The complicated coupling between the manipulator and an associated actuator results in a complex structure and a partially restricted freedom of movement for tripods as known from the prior art.
It is therefore an objective of the present invention to provide an apparatus for handling articles that is accordingly characterized by a simple structure and a high degree of freedom of movement. It is furthermore an objective to provide a method allowing the handling of articles with a high degree of freedom of movement. In addition, the method should be easy to implement.